Expect a trilogy of terror from Crime in the Madhouse

Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald10.28.2013

Crime in the Madhouse brings horror from the movie screen to the stage.Photo courtesy Teresa Rehmann

Running Sushi, created by Austria’s Liquid Loft, which is part of the 2013 Fluid Festival, features Stephanie Cummings, who grew up in Fort McMurray and studied dance at the University of Calgary.Photo Loizen Bauer

Crime in the Madhouse features horror theatre at Birds and Stone in CalgaryKate Ware

The cast of Crime in the Madhouse, a trio of Grand Guignol plays at Birds and StoneKate Ware

In Running Sushi, the order of the show is determined by the audience, which chooses from 12 different pieces of fresh sushi to select the scenes.Loizen Bauer

Alice Nelson has a thing for horror theatre, which is quite different from horrible theatre.

“I kind of like that it elicits such a response from the audience,” she says.

“We’re so desensitized from horror movies and stuff,” she says. “That seeing actual violence right in front of you reminds you of how human we are.”

Nelson is the not-so-evil mastermind behind Crime in the Madhouse, a trio of plays that are pulled from the Grand Guignol era of horror theatre.

Nelson, who spent 2012 assistant directing at Lunchbox Theatre, doesn’t work exclusively in horror: Calgary audiences may remember her solo show Elephant, inspired by her work in Clowns Without Borders, and her 2007 Fringe hit Local Celebrity, or Raunch, which she co-created and performed with Jacqueline Russell.

But every couple of years, she likes to revisit the scary stuff.

All of which raises a question: what the heck is Grand Guignol, anyhow?

“There was this guy who started a theatre in Paris,” she says. “And he decided to name the theatre Grand Guignol.

“You know the Punch and Judy puppets?” she asks. “There was one that was even more violent called Guignol.

“Grand is big in French and Guignol is puppet — so the idea is that people are giant, violent puppets.

“Isn’t that fun?”

At Birds and Stone, Nelson is presenting a kind of tasting menu of horror theatre.

“We’re doing it in the classic style,” she says. “(At the Grand Guignol in Paris), they would do a horror play, a comedy and then a horror play and they would call it hot and cold showers.

“The idea,” she says, “is that you would make the audience scream, you would make them laugh and then you would make them scream (even more).”

The first show is Final Kiss, which tells the story about a guy whose girlfriend burns his face with acid, then comes back to apologize.

The second show, These Cornfields, is a dark farce about a couple who have a guy move in with them to couch surf for a while, only to discover that he’s part of a more elaborate plot. The final piece, Crime in the Madhouse, tells the story of Louisa and her desperate efforts to get discharged from an insane asylum.

All of it unfolds in the heart of witching season at Birds & Stone on 16th Avenue N.W.

“It’s perfect!” Nelson says of the venue, which is in the basement of a church. “It’s funny, because most people like a clean theatre, but you walk into here, in the basement — and there’s the brick wall. It’s all scratched-up floors and I’m like, Oh my God, this is so good!

“And,” she adds, “it’s a nice, tight space. It’s pretty perfect. And it’s in a basement.

Stephanie Cummings is one of those Tilda Swinton-looking, continental contemporary dancers who has spent the past decade with Liquid Loft, a Vienna, Austria-based company.

That’s not so hard for fans to grasp when she meets them on Liquid Loft’s world tours, which is taking them to Calgary, where they are presenting Running Sushi as part of the 2013 Fluid Festival at Dancer’s Studio West.

Where the disconnect happens is when they ask where she learned to dance, and the answer comes back Fort McMurray, Alberta.

“I guess I get a lot of flack when I say I’m from Fort Mac,” she says. “But growing up in Fort Mac, I had every opportunity. I went to a great ballet school. There’s community theatre. I took singing lessons. I took music lessons. it was a pretty multicultural place, and the people there were not just interested in oil and Ski-Doos!

“There was a piano and community theatre there that were really fantastic.”

How does someone who grew up in Fort Mac end up finding an artistic home in Vienna?

It’s a long and winding journey that took Cummings through the dance program at the University of Calgary, where she met Melissa Monteros, an associate professor who recruited Cummings to dance at a festival in Poland.

There, she caught the eye of choreographer Chris Haring, who was starting a new dance company in Vienna.

In 2001, Cummings moved to Vienna, where she’s been ever since.

“It’s a great city to live,” she says. “The standard of living is incredible. Also, doing what I do, being a contemporary dancer, is sort of a marginalized career — but I can do it there.

“Austria still has quite a lot of government funding for art,” she says, “and so our company is quite well supported and because of that, we’re able to work and basically make a living from it.”

And Running Sushi?

“The piece is split into 12 different scenes,” she says, “The reason the choreographer (Haring) did that was that he didn’t want to create a narrative.

“He didn’t want to create a story from beginning to end which people can read,” she says, “so he decided to split it up ... and to always do the scenes in different order.”

What makes Running Sushi different than your average, every day experimental contemporary dance show is that they choose the order of the 12 different scenes by handing out pieces of fresh sushi to a few lucky audience members before every show.

“Yes, we do that for every show (sushi),” she says. “It’s our little ritual.”

What makes doing Running Sushi different in Calgary than say South Korea, or Japan, or across Europe for Cummings is that chances are excellent a few close relatives may score a piece of sushi.

“Most of my family does live in Calgary,” she says. “I have two brothers, and my mom lives there and I have lots of uncles and cousins and everything.

“(Also), we’re performing at Dancers Studio West,” she adds, “where I performed when I was in university. I am really looking forward to it.”

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